Lucky Number Music

‘Blood On My Hands’ is the first track taken from FTSE’s anticipated debut album, ‘Joyless’, due for release on August 28th.

The video has been directed by Luke Bather and was inspired by the films Samsara and Baraka and the world of high fashion. ‘Blood On My Hands’ comments on the exploitation behind consumerism and the video aimed to use only ethically made clothing and jewellery. Birdsong London provided jackets made ethically in Malawi, by Khama, as well as Jewellery made by women recovering from addictions and eating disorders via Sweet Cavanagh; and Faiint supplied dresses handmade in the UK.

FTSE has announced that his debut album ‘JOYLESS’, which features current single ‘Blood On My Hands’, will be released on 28th August 2015. In addition he has also unveiled, via a premiere with Noisey, the album’s title track – a haunting tune, worthy of the biggest cinema screen, backed with deliberate minimal beats, on which he questions with poetic poise “We all cry, we all cry, apart from these moments, everything’s joyless. So tell me why we’re joyless?”

FTSE is Midlander Sam Manville’s producer-artist-polemical guise, where he plays everything and even delivers finished masters of the very distinguished and distinguishable results. ‘JOYLESS’ follows a trio of well received EP’s – FTSE I, FTSE II and Love Un Ltd. Combining the vehement thrashes of the music of his youth and his free-flowing social analytics with a more soothing, often ironic, tone from his wife of 5 years, Taz, together with various sonic infusions, he has created a fearlessly bold statement for a debut album: with the frank and informed voice of KLF or PSB’s through a globalised and comfortably chaotic pop sound.

‘JOYLESS’ is Manville’s defeatist manifesto on our over-connected, over-stimulated and over-priced world. It’s defeatist in the sense that it’s the voice of those who feel trapped in a system, but unable to see a way out – but that’s not to say it’s not angry. Really, really angry.

“All the EPs were me as a producer and writer; the album is me as an artist,” he says. “It’s almost going back to the punk roots of what I used to do. That ‘fuck you, here I am, this is my thing, shut up and fucking take it.’” (Sam Manville, FTSE)

Further info, track-listing and pre-order information here.

‘Blood On My Hands’ will be released on 15th June 2015, and is the first track taken from FTSE’s anticipated debut album, due for release late this Summer.  Premiered on i_D who said “his brutally honest lyrics and anti-capitalist musings are self-deprecating anthems for modern society, topped with – as all the best things are – catchy poppy choruses”

FTSE is Sam Manville’s producer-artist-polemical guise, previously self-described as ‘one Man, one MPC, one cracked version of Logic and one blurred vision’.  Now, with Blood On My Hands, the vision is clear, a comment on the exploitation behind consumerism that is so rarely acknowledged (“silver, gold, gas, oil and coal / I got blood on my hands and all over my home”).

FTSE, with full band, will play London’s Electrowerkz on 26th May and Reading/Leeds Festival, Radio 1Xtra Stage across the August Bank holiday.  Tickets for Electrowerkz are available here.

FTSE‘s third E.P ‘Love Un Ltd’ will be released on 21st April and we’re delighted to now share with you the third track from the EP, ‘Utopia’.

Born out of a preoccupation with “defeatism” and a world full of hypocrites, in which Manville includes himself, ‘Utopia’, is a refreshing and brutally honest commentary about how society’s acceptance that everything is fucked needs to be questioned. ‘Utopia’ is the protest song for Generation Z.

Listen below and pre-order the 12″ here (heavyweight vinyl and limited to 300 copies) or download from iTunes.

We are delighted to present to you FTSE’s video for “Nite Life (ft Femme)”, the lead track from his forthcoming EP, directed by Miles Bingham and inspired by the work of photographer, Maciej Dakowicz, and his Cardiff After Dark portraits.

These weekend night scenes are on any high street on any City in the UK; fuelled by cheap alcohol, drugs and emotions.  Everything takes place in public – drinking, fighting, kissing, crying, sex and, when energy is exhausted, sleeping. Supermen chat up Wonderwomen, somebody does press-ups topless in the rain, the hungry ones finish their portions of chips before the police stop another argument or fight. Nobody seems to worry about tomorrow, what matters is here and now. Then another week at work, until the next weekend.

‘Nite Life’s sound-scapes perfectly capture the dark brooding atmosphere found in these high street scenes.  “Empty people, stumbling through the night, Empty people, avoiding real life”.